Agatha Christie

#485: “What I say is, is it wise or necessary to rake up things?” – Memory as Evidence in Elephants Can Remember (1972) by Agatha Christie

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Elephants Can Remember

You’ve heard of Elephants Can Remember (1972): it’s the final time Hercule Poirot investigates a case at Agatha Christie’s direction, written in the final stretch of her career when everything she did was awful and without merit.  Not even I could find something positive to say about it…could I?

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#447: The Criminous Alphabet – A is for…Alibi [Part 2 of 2]

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A is for

Last week I talked — at great length — about the alibi in crime and detective fiction as utilised by the criminal working alone.  This week, I’ll hopefully find as much (or, depending on your feelings about last week’s post, maybe less) to say where more than one criminal is involved, and then if there’s time I’ll diverge into crimes where there is no alibi.

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#440: The Hollow Case of the Distressed Lady in A Different Kind of Evil (2018) by Andrew Wilson

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Different Kind of Evil UK

Andrew Wilson’s first novel featuring Agatha Christie, A Talent for Murder (2017), met with positive reviews but seemed rather more Highsmithian than detection in concept (perhaps unsurprising, as Wilson has written a biography of Patricia Highsmith) and so I passed it over.  And then John Norris — patron saint of the obscure, the forgotten, and the damned-near impossible-to-find — posted this rave review of the follow-up, A Different Kind of Evil (2018), and definitely caught my interest.

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#436: “I am in my own way an emissary of justice” – A Long Goodbye to Aunt Jane in Nemesis (1971) by Agatha Christie

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Nemesis

After 41 years, 12 novels, and 20 short stories, Nemesis (1971) represents the end of the road for Agatha Christie and her spinster detective Miss Jane Marple.  Marple herself would survive her creator in the posthumously-published Sleeping Murder (1976), but since that was written decades prior — and the collection Miss Marple’s Final Cases (1979) consists of uncollected stories from much earlier in Christie’s career — this the final time they would have together.

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